X-Team

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the SVP Engineering of Instil

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

CRM for Non Profit organizations.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire X-Team to accomplish?

• Increase velocity
• Help meet a difficult target date
• Improve team morale

SOLUTION

How did you find X-Team?

Referral

Why did you select X-Team over others?

• Close to my geographic location
• Pricing fits our budget
• Great culture fit
• Good value for cost
• Referred to me

How many teammates from X-Team were assigned to this project?

2-5 Employees

Describe the scope of work in detail. Please include a summary of key deliverables.

We had started on a full re-platforming effort to align with a strategy shift toward supporting enterprise scale customers. This includes a complete rewrite of our backend and a re-implementation of the front end with additional features added. 
Our application isn't huge but we have a very tight timeline of just 6 months. The front end team was struggling to get things going. After adding just 2 X-Team contractors the velocity for our front end development was boosted 3x. Additionally, the added help and fresh perspective has improved the general team morale making everyone more productive.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What were the measurable outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

Generally velocity for UI development ~10 stories per week with 3 developers was boosted to consistantly >30 stories per week with 5 developers.

Describe their project management. Did they deliver items on time? How did they respond to your needs?

• They were very professional and consistently on point.
• Highly communicative with a perspective of being as helpful as possible. 
• Realy and willing to offer suggestions as well as make reasonable decisions autonomously without being too opinionated or strict with their own solutions.

What was your primary form of communication with X-Team?

• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

Ease of communication and flexibility to work with us the way we want to work. Staffing is important to us and it's critical to work with a contracting company that takes staffing as seriously as we do.

Are there any areas for improvement or something X-Team could have done differently?

Only suggestion would be around tooling. Most of the communication happened primarily though email which was a bit clunky and slow for our more modern standards.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CEO of Ziplet, an educational technology (edtech) company. We provide solutions for teachers and educational institutions to check in with their students and support their learning.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with X-Team?

We were looking for a frontend engineer to support the development of our core products, so we hired one through X-Team.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

X-Team helped us find a frontend engineer and placed them on our team to work exclusively on our product for 18 months. We took the engineer through our regular staff onboarding process, which included giving them an overview of our product and introducing them to our code base. From there on, they worked for us remotely until the completion of the project.

What is the team composition?

We just worked with one frontend developer from X-Team.

How did you come to work with X-Team?

I found them through my personal network. When I contacted X-Team, they took my requirements and found the resource that met those requirements. We felt that the first person they found was the right person for our project, so we placed them on our team right away.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent $250,000 AUD (approximately $168,000 USD).

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together from November 2021–April 2023.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement? 

The frontend engineer provided by X-Team became a core member of our team and delivered on the projects we assigned to them. This person not only contributed to the development side of our project but also contributed to all of our rituals and processes, ultimately helping us improve as a team as well.

How did X-Team perform from a project management standpoint?

The placement of X-Team’s engineer in our team was seamless. From day one, this person was very well integrated into our processes; they became a fully-fledged member of the team and participated in all aspects of our work. Moreover, they were professional and simple to work with, which made everything really easy.

X-Team’s engineer worked remotely for us, so they used all of our normal communication tools, including video conferencing and Slack. Additionally, we used Jira internally for project management. With X-Team, we communicated through email and phone calls.

What did you find most impressive about them?

X-Team met our needs very quickly and supported their engineer throughout the project. Overall, they did a very professional job.

Are there any areas they could improve?

There was nothing X-Team could have improved on; the process was very straightforward.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Firstly, be clear on the requirements for the engineer you're looking for so that you can find the right person. Secondly, when you engage the engineer, fully involve them in everything that your team does. Don’t involve them only in the technical aspects of the project but also let them participate in cultural activities and celebrations so that they become a true member of your team.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m an executive at a financial services company. We provide cross-border payments and bank transfers.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenges were you trying to address with X-Team?

We needed help with staff augmentation because we didn’t have enough IT resources due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

X-Team provides remote IT staff augmentation solutions for us. They offer experienced software engineering resources that jump into our multiple projects as needed, specializing in React, C#, and AWS. We chose those resources based on the CVs, interviews, and results of coding tests that X-Team sends to us.

How did you come to work with X-Team?

Our marketing team referred them to us.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in June 2020, and the engagement is still ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

The main demonstration of the success of X-Team’s work is that we still have in our team the engineers they’ve provided. They’ve done a great job filtering the candidates for us to get a quality IT group. Overall, we’re happy with their work, and it feels like the engineers they’ve sourced for us are part of our team.

How did X-Team perform from a project management standpoint?

X-Team’s team and the engineers they provide are very responsive and communicative — they get back to us in less than 24 hours.

What did you find most impressive about them?

The quality of X-Team’s engineers is outstanding. The candidates have the right skill set for what we’re looking for.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I don’t think there’s anything they can improve on. They take care of everything for us, and we just get the right engineers for our projects.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Be clear with your requirements, communication, and time zones so that X-Team can find the right engineers for you.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the head of engineering at Double, a company providing flexible remote assistant services to lead executives by matching them with qualified executive assistants through a software platform. We offer a white-glove approach by ensuring that each executive is matched with the right assistant for them. Additionally, clients can use our platform to communicate with their assistants and delegate tasks daily.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with X-Team?

We were trying to ship a new product to our platform, for which we had hired a full-time engineer to help us out. Unfortunately, the engineer wasn’t a great fit for the project, and we couldn’t carry out the project with them. Thus, we needed help with onboarding a new software engineer quickly, so we hired X-Team to help us find someone.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

X-Team helped us find a software engineer to join our project, who helped us deliver the product we were developing. Initially, we had a discovery call with X-Team to describe our needs, and they explained how the process would work on their side. Then, they provided us with the profile of the person who could come and join us.

X-Team was in charge of screening candidates on their end, so we knew that the candidate they provided us with had been technically assessed ahead of time. Still, they let us interview them. Our process included a quick technical interview with our engineering team and a product and cultural fit interview with the product manager and me to ensure that the chosen candidate would collaborate with us well and was a good fit for our company.

The chosen candidate joined a week after the interview process, just before my vacation period. However, I managed to plan their onboarding very quickly and delegate the rest of the onboarding process to my team while I was away. This onboarding was fairly similar to how we usually onboard internal resources.

After their onboarding, we started involving the X-Team’s engineer in specific tasks, shared product definitions with them, and included them in our team's meetings for this project. Basically, this person worked with us and delivered code like any other engineer.

The project this engineer worked on was the development of a time-tracking product in the backend of our platform. They helped us custom-build this solution to track the time our flexible assistants spend on the tasks they get assigned. Their scope mostly included backend development, but they also helped us with frontend development.

That project went so well that we eventually returned to X-Team and onboarded another engineer to augment our internal team and help us with other large-scale projects long term. This resource also helped our engineering team improve their processes.

What is the team composition?

My main point of contact was Laura (Technical Recruiter), who managed our account throughout the engagement. Aside from her, I also met with her manager once during the introductory calls.

How did you come to work with X-Team?

An acquaintance who has also been leading engineering teams recommended X-Team and said that they had great resources. Thus, I looked at their contact information on their website and emailed them. Quickly, they arranged a call with me and my team, and we took it from there.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent around $100,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in June 2022, and our engagement ended in February 2022.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement? 

X-Team was able to find great engineers very fast, allowing us to complete our projects. Thanks to them, we’re now launching our time-tracking feature, which will enable us to remove dependency on a third-party service that costs us around $30,000 per year.

Moreover, thanks to the second engineer's work, we could automate our monthly invoicing process. With this automation, we can now send around 90% of our invoices automatically, and only 10% of our invoices need to be reviewed manually. Before having this automated process in place, our invoice turnaround time was around two weeks. Now, it will only be five days.

How did X-Team perform from a project management standpoint?

X-Team was very fast and truly worked within our timeline, which was finding a new engineer within a week. Everyone from their team was very communicative throughout the process and excelled at listening to our needs.

Laura was very responsive. We had monthly check-ins with her to ensure everything went well with the engineers, during which I provided feedback. When we changed the engineer we were working with, Laura truly listened to our needs and recommended another person to fit our new needs. The last engineer from X-Team we worked with was outstanding — Laura really nailed the brief.

In addition to that, X-Team resources really acted as part of our team and followed our internal processes, which included attending our project meetings and communicating with the rest of their team. Every week, their engineers participated in the project and aligned with us on what work needed to be done. Then, their work was reviewed by our lead engineer.

As for collaboration tools, we used Slack for regular communication, Tandem for video conferencing, Notion and GitHub for project management, and Height for task tracking.

What did you find most impressive about them?

X-Team has a very dedicated customer service team. The way Laura was able to find the right resources for us and the fact that everyone tried to improve each day were outstanding.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Although X-Team was able to find the right resources for us, it would have been great if we had had access to multiple profiles at once. It would have made us feel more involved in the decision-making process. Still, everything worked well in the end.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Describe your needs as clearly as possible and provide X-Team with a lot of information to allow them to match you with the right resource for your project. Additionally, people looking for new resources tend to focus on technical skills only when there are also very important cultural and personality elements involved, so ensure to talk about those areas with X-Team.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the director of engineering at Made Renovation, a full-service renovation company. Customers can come to us as a one-stop shop to remodel their bathrooms. We do everything from interior design, drawing blueprints, and getting permits to ordering materials and executing the construction. 

Technology powers our services, and I manage our software engineers, QA specialists, IT engineers, and data folks. 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with X-Team?

We hired them to scale our engineering organization sustainably. Like many, we realized there’s a ton of talent, particularly in Latin America, that’s technically adept, English-speaking, and in the right time zones to augment a software engineering team in the US easily.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

X-Team is our nearshore partner for acquiring technical talent in places where we can't hire directly. We develop a suite of applications that include a website, several backend services, and an iPad application for our physical showrooms, and X-Team helps us with all of them. Their engineers are fully embedded into our team. 

For example, they've helped us launch a major feature that includes a tracking dashboard for our material orders. We order items such as sinks, vanities, lights, and tiles from around 75 manufacturers, and we need to track these orders on a per-project basis to know when we can schedule work. Our scheduling depends on when key materials and the totality of the materials will arrive. On the dashboard, we can easily see where each project's materials are and the estimate for when we can begin construction. 

X-Team has done customizations, web and mobile app development, and has worked on several projects and launches. The team mostly uses TypeScript, Node.js, and React. They also work with various hosting platforms, such as Heroku, AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform, and Render. Most recently, they've helped us launch a few web applications. Currently, they're helping us build the next generation of our software. 

What is the team composition?

We work with nine senior software engineers from X-Team throughout the company. Additionally, we work with Sam (Regional Sales Director), who is our account manager. 

How did you come to work with X-Team?

When I joined the company, we were already working with X-Team. 

How much have you invested with them?

We pay them roughly $70,000 monthly, so we've invested around $1 million. 

What is the status of this engagement?

We've been working with them for at least a year, starting in 2021, and the engagement is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement? 

I've been very impressed with the quality of the engineers X-Team provides and the work they do. 

How did X-Team perform from a project management standpoint?

They're excellent at project management. We use Linear as our ticketing system to track the project's status. To communicate, we use Slack, Google Calendar, and email. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

Many companies offer nearshore resources, but the difference with X-Team is the quality of the engineers they provide. Other companies I've worked with have been very hit-or-miss, without a lot of QC or support system for their engineers; they're just trying to make a buck by playing middle man. 

Meanwhile, X-Team vets their engineers and provides them with a sustainable community that supports them and helps them grow. As a result, the product quality we get is much higher. Their services are worth paying a premium price because they offer great work overall and sustainable development in the long term. Their teammates are on par with the market. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

I would like more visibility into their pipeline, meaning the engineers they have available. Seeing the totality of the available talent would be helpful; they could have a partner portal I could visit. This is a minor issue, though. In terms of the services they provide, X-Team has been great. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

I advise working with your account manager; they can make or break the project, so you should invest in your relationship with them. The model we're using in which you embed the engineers into your team is also critical for success. Some companies separate the contractors into their own teams, leading to bad outcomes and us vs. them mentality. 

The engineers you'll get from X-Team will be just as good as the ones you would hire, so you should treat them the same — to the extent that your HR and legal departments will allow you. You'll get great results if you treat your team with dignity and respect.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the general manager of HR at a software company in education technology.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with X-Team?

We needed help with IT staff augmentation. We were looking for a particular technology stack.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

X-Team provides contractors in the software engineering space. We do the job description and provide it to them. They come back to us with candidates to interview.

What is the team composition?

Currently, we have three people assigned. The account manager is our main point of contact.

How did you come to work with X-Team?

They were a referral from one of our executive teams. We went out to a few suppliers for services, and X-Team returned with an excellent business proposal.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent $600,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in September 2020, and our relationship is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

We continue to use their contractors; they’ve been a good fit. They’ve integrated very well. We’ve used other contracting companies, but X-Team has been the best so far.

How did X-Team perform from a project management standpoint?

The contractors and account management team are very responsive. Our main point of contact is very helpful. The contractors are on our communication tools.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their knowledge and expertise within the space are outstanding. Also, they’re able to help us quickly.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, there’s nothing we’d have them improve.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Be open about what you’re looking for and communicate with them.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the director of product technology at a sports publishing company, a subsidiary of a larger news company. We publish videos and articles for our site.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with X-Team?

We needed help migrating from an old CMS into WordPress.

SOLUTION

Describe the scope of work in detail.

We utilized X-Team's resources for WordPress site migration and development. Their team upskilled our code to fit WordPress; the new site was built from scratch. Their team has also helped our parent company. 

Since our initial website development project wrapped, we've utilized their resources for Google Ads and rolled out Google AMP across our site. We've also used them as a resource for some of our products that use JavaScript. 

What is the team composition?

We've worked with about 10 developers from X-Team.

How did you come to work with X-Team?

X-Team was a recommended WordPress integration partner for enterprises.

What is the status of this engagement?

Our ongoing engagement with X-Team started around April 2014.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement? 

X-Team successfully delivered the website and ensured it was deployed on time and without any issues. The feedback across the business, including our parent company, about the performance and delivery of the Google Ads, was fantastic. We still have consistent resources utilized across other projects, and if our partnership wasn't successful, we shouldn't still be using X-Team's services. We're happy with the quality of work they're offering. 

How did X-Team perform from a project management standpoint?

X-Team has delivered within our defined project scopes. We use Atlassian Suite to manage the projects, specifically Jira and Confluence. We typically use Zoom and Microsoft Teams because everyone is working remotely. Although, we used to get email status updates and have face-to-face meetings. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

The quality of work and knowledge of the developers from X-Team really stand out. We've worked with other vendors, but X-Team stands out the most; they're outperforming their competitors. We've actually recently started vetting the developers they put on our projects, using the existing team as a benchmark. That has made the projects work even better.

Are there any areas they could improve?

We don't have anything for X-Team to improve at the moment. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

You don't really need to lay anything out before engaging with X-Team because they'll work with you to develop the scope. They'll guide you through the processes. 

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the Chief Technology Officer of Originate

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Software engineering and product delivery consultancy

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire X-Team to accomplish?

• Finding great software engineering talent to support our team
• Supporting our fluid staffing needs across a wide array of projects

SOLUTION

How did you find X-Team?

Referral

Why did you select X-Team over others?

• High ratings
• Close to my geographic location
• Pricing fits our budget
• Great culture fit
• Company values aligned

How many teammates from X-Team were assigned to this project?

20-30

Describe the scope of work in detail. Please include a summary of key deliverables.

Integration with the engineering team, delivering frontend React interfaces, backend services, and mobile clients.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What were the measurable outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

The team members integrated seamlessly with our own teams. They played critical roles and delivered quality, working software. Both our own employees and those of our clients loved the X-Team team members and grew close working relationships with them.

Describe their project management. Did they deliver items on time? How did they respond to your needs?

Their work quality was exceptional and their delivery progress was measurable and predictable

What was your primary form of communication with X-Team?

• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

They invest in their employees and establish a strong culture of engineering excellence and attention to quality among their team members.

Are there any areas for improvement or something X-Team could have done differently?

No. We are very satisfied with them as a partner.